Wednesday, May 30, 2012

Pastor Mack Wolford, a member of the Pentecostal "Signs Following" tradition, handles a rattlesnake during a service at the Church of the Lord Jesus in Jolo, W.V., in this Sept. 2, 2011, photo. (Lauren Pond for the Washington Post via Getty Images)

By Julia Duin, Washington Post: May 29

Mack Wolford, a flamboyant Pentecostal pastor from
West Virginia whose serpent-handling talents were profiled last November
in The Washington Post Magazine , hoped the outdoor service he had
planned for Sunday at an isolated state park would be a “homecoming like the
old days,” full of folks speaking in tongues, handling snakes and having a
“great time.” But it was not the sort of homecoming he foresaw.

Instead, Wolford, who turned 44 the previous day, was
bitten by a rattlesnake he owned for years. He died late Sunday.

Mark Randall “Mack” Wolford was known all over Appalachia
as a daring man of conviction. He believed that the Bible mandates that
Christians handle serpents to test their faith in God — and that, if they are
bitten, they trust in God alone to heal them.

He and other adherents cited Mark 16:17-18 as the reason
for their

practice: “And these signs will follow those who believe:
in My name they will cast out demons; they will speak with new tongues; they
will take up serpents; and if they drink anything deadly, it will by no means
hurt them; they will lay their hands on the sick, and they will recover.”

The son of a serpent handler who himself died in 1983
after being bitten, Wolford was trying to keep the practice alive, both in West
Virginia, where it is legal, and in neighboring states where it is not. He was
the kind of man reporters love: articulate, friendly and appreciative of media
attention. Many serpent-handling Pentecostals retreat from journalists, but
Wolford didn’t. He’d take them on snake-hunting expeditions.

Last Sunday started as a festive outdoor service on a
sunny afternoon at Panther Wildlife Management Area, a state park roughly 80
miles west of Bluefield, W.Va. In the preceding days, Wolford had posted
several teasers on his Facebook page asking people to attend.

“I am looking for a great time this Sunday,” he wrote May
22. “It is going to be a homecoming like the old days. Good ’ole raised in the
holler or mountain ridge running, Holy Ghost-filled speaking-in-tongues sign
believers.”

“Praise the Lord and pass the rattlesnakes, brother” he
wrote on May 23. He also invited his extended family, who had largely given up
the practice of serpent handling, to come to the park.

“At one time or another, we had handled [snakes], but we
had backslid,” his sister, Robin Vanover, said Monday evening. “His birthday
was Saturday, and all he wanted to do is get his brothers and sisters in church
together.”

And so they were gathered at this evangelistic hootenanny
of Christian praise and worship. About 30 minutes into the service, his sister
said, Wolford passed a yellow timber rattlesnake to a church member and his
mother.

“He laid it on the ground,” she said, “and he sat down
next to the snake, and it bit him on the thigh.”

A state forester, who was not authorized to speak on the
record, said park officials were unaware of Wolford’s activities. “Had we known
he had poisonous animals, we would have never allowed it,” he said.

The festivities came to a halt shortly thereafter, and
Wolford was taken back to a relative’s house in Bluefield to recover, as he
always had when suffering from previous snake bites. By late afternoon, it was
clear that this time was different, and desperate messages began flying about
on Facebook, asking for prayer.

Wolford got progressively worse. Paramedics transported
him to Bluefield Regional Medical Center, where he was pronounced dead. It
could not be determined when the paramedics were called.

Wolford was 15 when he saw his father die at age 39 of a
rattlesnake bite in almost exactly the same circumstances.

“He lived 101 / 2 hours,” Wolford told The
Washington Post last fall.

“When he got bit, he said he wanted to die in the church.
Three hours after he was bitten, his kidneys shut down. After a while, your
heart stops. I hated to see him go, but he died for what he believed in.”

According to people who witnessed Mack Wolford’s death,
history repeated itself. He was bitten roughly at 1:30 p.m.; he died about 11
that night.

One of the people present was Lauren Pond, 26, a
freelance photographer from the District. She had been photographing serpent
handlers in the area for more than a year, including for The Post, and stayed
at Wolford’s home in November.

“He helped me to understand the faith instead of just
documenting it,”

she said Tuesday. “He was one of the most open pastors
I’ve ever met.

He was a friend and a teacher.”

The family allowed her to stay near Wolford’s side Sunday
night, and she’s still recovering from having witnessed the pastor’s agonizing
death. “I didn’t see the bite,” she said. “I saw the aftermath.”

In an interview with The Post for last year’s story, Jim
Murphy, curator of the Reptile Discovery Center at the National Zoo, described
what happens when a rattlesnake bites.

The pain is “excruciating,” he said. “The venom attacks
the nervous system. It’s vicious and gruesome when it hits.”

But Wolford refused to fear the creatures. He slung
poisonous snakes around his neck, danced with them, even laid down on or near
them. He displayed spots on his right hand where copperheads had sunk their
fangs. His home in Bluefield had a spare bedroom filled with at least eight
venomous snakes: usually rattlers, water moccasins and copperheads that he fed
rats and mice. He was passionate about wanting to help churches in nearby
states — including North Carolina and Tennessee, where the practice is illegal
— start up their own serpent-handling services.

“I promised the Lord I’d do everything in my power to
keep the faith going,” he said in October. “I spend a lot of time going a lot
of places that handle serpents to keep them motivated. I’m trying to get
anybody I can get involved.”

His funeral will be held Saturday at his church, House of
the Lord Jesus, in Matoaka, just north of Bluefield.

Julia Duin, a contributing writer for The Washington Post
Magazine, wrote the original article about Mack Wolford.

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